1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to managing an object and, in particular, to managing the design of an object in an immersive environment.
2. Background
Computer-aided design (CAD) software is often used in creating, modifying, or analyzing a design for an object. The object may be, for example, an aircraft, a flight deck, a landing gear system, an engine housing, or some other suitable object.
A designer may generate a computer-aided design of an object such as the flight deck of an aircraft using specifications, preliminary drawings, and other input. The computer-aided design is contained in a model of the object.
An analysis of the design may be performed. For example, an engineer may perform a finite element analysis on the design of the flight deck. The finite element analysis may be used to determine how the object will handle stress, temperatures, and other environmental factors.
Another person, an ergonomic specialist, may analyze the model with respect to ergonomics. For example, the person may review the human factors in the design of the flight deck to determine whether a pilot may interact efficiently with different components in the flight deck.
For example, the ergonomic specialist may review the dimensions for parts of the flight deck such as a seat, a flight stick, switches, and other parts that a pilot may interact with in the flight deck. The review of these dimensions may be used to determine whether sufficient ergonomics are present in the design of the flight deck to perform operations for the aircraft. The dimensions may also be reviewed to determine whether a desired level of comfort would be present for the flight of the aircraft. In some cases, the creation of some parts of the flight deck may be needed for the ergonomic analysis.
The engineer and the ergonomic specialist send feedback to the designer. The feedback may be a report sent by email or a hard copy that may be sent by regular mail or overnight delivery.
The designer may then make changes to the model of the object using the feedback. Further testing and analysis may be performed and further modifications to the model may be made in this manner until the flight deck has a desired level of performance.
This type of process, however, involves multiple people interacting with each other and may take more time than desired to perform iterations in testing, analysis, and modifying design changes. For example, scheduling between the designer, the engineer, and the ergonomic specialist to analyze and modify the design may take more time than desired. Also, the engineer may need to schedule a time to run the finite element analysis on the model of the flight deck.
The ergonomic specialist may not need the results of the finite element analysis, but may have other reviews for other designs in models of other objects to perform prior to evaluating the design for the flight deck. The analysis performed by the ergonomic specialist may require fabrication of physical parts of the flight deck as needed. Also, each time a change in the model occurs, additional parts may be fabricated to evaluate the change in the model. The fabrication of the parts for the analysis also may take more time and expense than desired.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that take into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues. For example, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that overcome a technical problem with managing design changes in models of objects.